File Sharing On the Decline? Look Again

Music Think Tank, an amalgam of music industrialists, economists and theorists, has published a study illustrating the decline of “free music” searches and came to the conclusion that file sharing is on the decline. While the data is most certainly true, MTT might be missing the point.



While many would-be illegal downloaders are still using Google and other search engines to find albums or tracks directly, a trend which is still reflected in MTT’s graphs, many others have moved beyond these search portals to 3rd and 4th generation P2P file-sharing networks, which often have their own built-in search features and can even include torrent aggregating features that will compile various P2P servers and offer data on the amount of uploads and downloads for the file.

So, while fewer “free music” and other related searches are taking place in Google and other search engines, illegal downloading—err, file sharing—is actually increasing in volume, a fact which MTT themselves admit. In fact, even the term “free music” when searched in relation to “blogspot” nearly counters the slightly-reduced “free music” search term, paralleling it almost perfectly in a monthly and yearly timeline.



Understandably, the Music Industry would like illegal downloading to go away, but, with the near-collapse of the RIAA, which was largely due to the mounting cost of litigation against illegal downloading, most of which failed to make even a noticeable impact against the practice and even received bad press in several occasion when deceased, terminally-ill and juvenile defendants were subpoenaed, the fact remains that illegal downloading isn’t just increasing but is actually becoming normalized.

In a survey conducted by a Swedish agency in 2008, more than 75% of young voters [in Sweden] between the ages of 18-20 find it “OK to download files from the Net, even if it is illegal.” This trend is substantiated virtually everywhere with only slight fluctuation based on the phrasing of the question and the demographic surveyed. Moreover, more than 75% of Americans polled claimed they knew what was legal and illegal within their P2P file sharing networks. Only questions regarding which party, P2P network or individual, is legally culpable indicated a point of divergence in illegal downloads’ evolution from alarmist war cry to normalized practice.

For now, the Music Industry and its think tank would find their energy better spent at developing potentially lifesaving/game-changing concepts like Cloud Music, a notion that was discussed at length at the recent SXSW conference and hinges on the notion of ALL music being available to stream to an appropriate device at a monthly or other revolving-date rate.

For more information on music, see the music review site. For more tech and entertainment news, stick with the TTR Tech News Blog:

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